oh, for wings to fly
by Empatheia
Summary: -Rhode, the Earl- A dying Italian princess hears the call of the hunt in her dreams.


**A/N: **Written for **dgray-contest** on Livejournal, week #5 theme **Noah**.

I don't own -man and make no profit from writing fanfiction from it.

**x.x.x**

_**oh, for wings to fly**_

**x.x.x**

Every day her breath comes harder.

The nurse holds a pristine hankerchief to her mouth as she coughs, and it comes away damp and angry with blood. The taste of iron lingers in her mouth. Not long now, she thinks.

Carolina is young, wealthy, the daughter of a contessa. Her hair is long and dark as autumn shadows, and her skin is pale as parchment. An air of casual nobility clings to her like perfume. Even so, despite all her golden adornments and the silken sheets she lies on, she is dying.

No one speaks of the wounds on her forehead, which neither her disease nor her rage can explain. They are wrapped in soft linen and hidden from sight. All answers to the question they pose are blasphemy, and the castle is a house of God which must never be defiled.

Sometimes, the priest who Mama loves stops by to see her, but he never meets her eyes. He only kneels over her bed and prays, for hours at a time, his low mumbling voice the only way she knows he is still alive. The rolling strings of Latin are somehow comforting. She accepts his presence without complaint.

Many hours she spends asleep, too weary to keep her senses aware, and in those hours she dreams.

xxxxx

He who is First can feel her, who is Second. She calls to him across the quiet realms, where no voice can be heard but hers, and he sends her dreams so she knows her cries are not entirely swallowed by the long silence between them.

Soon. The anticipation is bright on his tongue, a swift leaping of his immortal heart.

He has been alone for such a very long time. It will be ever so lovely to have a family again, to share the dark with.

xxxxx

Carolina dreams, and in her dreams there is a tall man in a long coat. He walks here and there, a top hat cocked at a jaunty angle atop his head, his dark hair curling merrily about its brims. There is a gentle smile on his face, a twinkle in his eye, as though he watches the antics of children or dogs and is amused by their innocence.

At the top of her silent voice she calls to him, and for a moment, she thinks he hears her.

But no, if he hears, he is unconcerned with her small, grasping feelings. His eyes do not move to her even once. He is far away, so close to her eyes but far beyond the reach of her small white hands.

Now the anger comes.

xxxxx

She's lovely, he thinks, a credit to her race. The cold carelessness of immortality already drapes about her shoulders, even as she dies, long before she tastes the elixir of everlasting life.

It's as if she was born to live forever.

He, who has seen in all its tumultuous glory and horror the divided heart of God, knows it is not impossible that she was. God can be equally as kind as he can be cruel.

The Earl sits back and counts the breaths she has left, and waits.

xxxxx

When the nurse leaves, Carolina throws open her shutters and inhales as far as she can, feels the snow creep into her blackened lungs and set them aflame.

Through the evening shadows she can see the edge of the forest, dark and tangled far below her high window. Between its writhing branches lurk the creatures of the night, those who hunt by smell and hearing and dim moonlight, who do not need to see to find blood and heat amongst the roots and howling wind.

She licks her lips, tasting the remnants of her own blood, and spreads a predatory smile. Carolina is a princess, but before that and after that she is alive, and not deaf to the call of the hunt. Her family, blinded by the perceived security of their tall stone walls and bright swords, have forgotten what it feels like to yearn for death.

Carolina has not. Death is her most constant companion. She loves it as she loves herself, because the only other option is sick terror and she is not a coward.

In her dreams, the tall man comes again. She catches his tailcoat in her fingers.

xxxxx

As he waits, the Earl contemplates God, and all the splintered facets which make him whole.

To be God, he must be everything, or he would hardly be worth calling God. The humans who call him by that name, however, accept only shards of him at a time, the pieces they find palatable to their narrow moralities and lust for power. The rest they discard, rename, ignore, and thus lessen Him into something hardly more than human.

His love they accept. His vengeance they fear, but still accept. His wrath, his pride, his benevolence, the vastness of his sight and knowing they accept. They love him and believe they fear him, but they have never allowed themselves to see the truth and are thus blind and hopeful.

The Earl, disciple of God's Chosen One, knows better. As much as He loves, he Hates. As far as He is proud, He is ashamed and full of loathing. As far as He is merciful, he is also vicious. War is His just as peace is.

For every saint, there is a demon. The Church has taken the gathering of saints as its jurisdiction. The Earl prefers the demons in any case.

Her dream brushes his, and he tastes his own blood.

xxxxx

When she wakes, it is winter at last, and also her last day to feel the swift ice on the northern wind, to taste the salt from the distant sea.

The nurse dotes on her, sponging her forehead and plying her with broths and teas, but Carolina is not interested. What use are soothing brews to her when Death himself is reaching out his hand to her? She is not afraid. This has been a very long time coming, and she has never been an ordinary girl.

Mama comes today, to her surprise. Perhaps she is more awake than Carolina believed her to be, to sense the ending in the air. Or perhaps she saw this in her dreams, where she is defenseless.

Her farewell is stiff and cold. Carolina accepts it and forgets it even as she leaves the room. Her mother has never been a mother to her. The Contessa is all she is and all Carolina remembers her being. Her goodbyes are little more than formalities.

The nurse weeps on her shoulder, strokes her hair, tries to warm her and tie her to this world of stone and silk with the weight of her body. Carolina appreciates her sincerity, but...

Far away to the east, the sea is calling, deep and dark and wild, and beyond it a world of sharp-edged, bloody dreams.

xxxxx

It is time, thinks the Earl. At long last.

Swirling his long coat over his broad shoulders and hooking an umbrella through his elbow, he sets off through the doors of his stronghold at a jaunty pace.

When they get back, he thinks, there will be a party just for the two of them. He'll bake cakes and hang streamers from the arches and hug her until she chokes. He'll fill her room with cookies and toys and candles and teach her what it means to truly love the world.

He will love her as his daughter, and all will be well.

xxxxx

In her dream, Carolina has a vision of a tower by the sea, jutting proudly from a high stone promontory, just beyond the reach of even the angriest of waves. If I were there, she thinks, if I pushed the waves, they would be tall enough.

The waves spill over a pair of silver scales, tipping them now this way, now that, now bright and now quiet.

The wounds on her forehead split open and paint her face with red.

xxxxx

On the storm winds and gusts of snow he comes, flying light as a feather despite his height and breadth of shoulder. The forces of nature have ever been his friend, and he hardly even needed to ask them today.

From an island east across the sea from Cathay he flies, all the way to the fair and fruitful land of Italia.

There he finds, languishing in her death throes upon a bed of pale silk with her hair all about her childish body, his chosen daughter.

She is waiting for him.

**XxxxX**


End file.
